Is hybrid advice right for your business?
Having addressed the challenges, the next step is to consider whether and how your business could benefit from implementing automation and digital advice. Some key points to consider are:
- The volume of cases your advisers are able to serve properly. Could they benefit from a system which can reduce, for example, retirement case time from an average of over 35 hours to complete, to under 9 hours?
- Would your advisers be better employed dealing with clients’ financial goals and aspirations than taking down fact find details – saving them on average 30-45 minutes per client?
- Would you benefit from an onboarding process where 95% of fact finds are completed digitally, with little or no input from advice firm staff, before the client sees the adviser?
- If suitability reports could largely self-populate from the fact find – including for example, validation of data and automated fund recommendation, making a 6-7 hour task one that takes as little as 35 minutes – how many more cases could your advisers and paraplanners complete?
- Would taking away data entry and systems administration tasks from staff and making their roles more about delivering value to the client, provide for a more motivated, satisfied, and happier team?
- Do you want to attract more clients with digital onboarding and nurture them into life-long clients?
- Are you looking to grow and broaden the client base of your business, to bring on more wealth accumulating clients profitably, including the next generation of clients, who have expectations for a digitally enabled, convenient for them to use, flexible advice service?
- Looking at the next 5, 10 and 15 years, do you want an operational model that can help future-proof your business?
If your answer to any of these questions is yes, then your business will likely benefit from taking a deeper dive into a hybrid, digital-first approach to advice.
Ensuring the right fit
Once you’ve identified your challenges and the opportunities open to you by adopting a hybrid advice approach, it’s time to find the right system and software provider. Here are some key pointers on what to look for:
- A provider who has experience of successfully delivering hybrid advice technology to your market, whether you are an advice firm with multiple advisers, a building society, or a tier 1 bank.
- Does the provider lay out their process for you, from initial engagement to account management, so you know what you’re getting?
- Who’s on the team? You want a provider that incorporates experience across the board, not just tech-focussed people but those with experience of the financial advice market and its operational nuances too.
- Do they offer a fact find meeting, a high-level product demo, and provide sufficient engagement with internal teams, as well as good quality of proof points, analysis and follow up information?
- Can they properly demonstrate how their proposition has both profited other companies, and will fit with your business plans?
Implementation – don’t pause your business
One of the key issues for businesses when they are looking to implement new technology into their operations, is the potential interruption to the current daily workflow. The last thing a business needs is to have to stop trading while it implements a new system.
With our Turo hybrid advice solution for example, you can alleviate the inefficiencies and stress caused by legacy operations without forcing the business to pause the business.
Instead, you can build in efficiencies, reduce costs, and allow a focus on growing your client bank and revenues, on a modular basis. A company can start small, introducing functionality gradually over time, enabling it to take advantage of the benefits that have most impact on immediate operational blockers, and are right for the business at the right time. We find this is a major problem for businesses which can be alleviated from the outset.
We are already seeing leading financial advice businesses take advantage of hybrid advice technology to increase their capacity to serve clients and increase their revenues. At the same time, consumer expectations of what they want from their advice firm is changing, to include digital services.
Looking at developments in the market in 2022, we would argue that researching and learning more about hybrid advice, and all that it offers, should be part of the now and future business strategy of any large advice firm that wants to be successful in what is becoming an increasing automated and digital market.
